


Heart Full of Napalm

by severinne



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Denial, M/M, Masturbation, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-08
Updated: 2010-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-15 06:10:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/severinne/pseuds/severinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam needs to keep fighting; sometimes, Gene makes the fighting very easy to get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart Full of Napalm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talkingtothesky](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=talkingtothesky).



> Written for the 2010 Life on Mars Ficathon and based on a prompt provided by talkingtothesky.

An empty green bottle stood sentry next to Sam’s fold-out bed, smudged with fingerprints, a few useless drops of sour red puddled in the bottom. The wine had scoured some of the bad taste of boredom from Sam’s throat but left his tongue parched with an insatiable thirst no matter how many times he had refilled his glass.

With the bottle alone left for company, Sam was sorely tempted to take it by the neck and use it to smash something. Or failing that, to tip it over for the world’s most miserable game of Spin the Bottle.

Instead, he let his stained wine glass drop to the ugly carpet and sprawled back across his bed with a restless sigh. He resented his boredom when he knew he should be grateful; the department had been operating with near-military precision ever since the colossal clusterfuck of Billy Kemble’s death on their watch. Everyone in CID was thoroughly chastened by the incident and rightly terrified of the haunted disgust that still lurked in their Guv’s eyes. For the first time since Sam had found himself temporally displaced and demoted, he was witness to a department that was quietly yet fiercely determined to do everything by the book.

Sam was slowly realizing, with a pang of irritation, that sometimes he well and truly hated doing things by the book.

It wasn’t that he would ever want to do away with the procedures it took forever for this lot to learn, Sam reflected with shudder. The degree of neglect in CID had been terrifying, but it had also given Sam something against which to rally his will and his strength, gave him a reason to keep fighting. No doubt the battle was nowhere near over, but that cell death had triggered an impasse from which Sam had yielded no satisfaction whatsoever. Instead, everyone kept their heads down and Sam simmered anxiously inside, stripped of purpose and strangely lost.

He rolled aside on the narrow mattress, just far enough to allow the flat of his hand to test the tenderness of his ribcage through his thin shirt. The bruises on his face had faded off a couple days ago, and Sam sighed in disappointment when even the hardest prod of his fingers produced no memory of his back slamming into the lockers during that fight with Ray. Far from burning and bleeding with the full awareness of being alive, Sam’s body was erased back to uncertain numbness, as empty as that bottle of Nelson’s house red.

Not that he particularly relished keeping Ray’s bruises. His lip curled with a wry sneer as he flopped flat onto his back again, frowning at the damp patches on his ceiling. The belligerent sergeant had a talent for bringing out the worst of Sam’s latent aggression but fighting with Ray was about nothing more than pure defiance fuelled by anger. Satisfying though it was, rising to that punch-up in the locker room had lacked the primal rush beyond temper that had set him stalking towards Gene in the gents, determined to smash his smug face into the washroom mirror before Gene had gotten the better of him.

Remembering the ease with which Gene had twisted his arm back and pinned him facedown over the sinks made Sam groan out loud in the privacy of his tiny flat, mostly in frustration at his own stupidity. The mirror’s reflection had given Gene all the warning he had needed to claim the upper hand; Sam had all but invited him to do so with such a reckless move.

He blinked sharply, twice, at his stained ceiling. Felt the heat crawling up his neck before he could force it back down.

Surely he hadn’t been seeking out the humiliation of defeat, but the bruising grip on his wrist, the bite of the counter’s edge deep into his pelvis, Gene’s hips pushed tight against him, all had focused his senses so clean and precise amidst the confusion of sound and taste pummeling him from 2006. Anxiety and fear, even the longing to wake up and go home, all had faded away beneath the taut twist of arousal wrung out of him beneath Gene’s hands.

That same reluctant lust crept upon him now, sneaking its way beneath this late and lonely night, curling into a heated knot deep in his belly. With eyes falling deliberately shut, Sam dragged a hand down his prone body from chest to stomach to the edge of his trousers, hesitating before he reached further down and covered his stirring groin with the palm of his hand.

Sam squeezed himself in a slow building rhythm, matching the acceleration of his blood in his veins. Gene was still far too close to the surface of his mind for this to be remotely safe, but wine and restlessness won out over common sense; his left hand soon joined the right, both tugging impatiently at his belt and flies and shoving strained fabric aside until he moaned into the relief of his fingers closing around his flushed and aching cock.

The first full stroke of his hand made Sam gasp and writhe over the unmade bed, taken aback by the intensity of his arousal. Struggling against the tight denim bunched low around his arse, Sam braced his booted feet in the rumbled blankets, flexing and spreading his legs as far as he could manage as he pumped himself faster. The dry friction of his hand chafed the smooth, too-thin skin of his cock; he released himself with a low growl, felt a filthy stab of gratification as he spat crudely into his palm and rubbed his saliva over himself, easing the slide of each hard, punishing stroke. He could so easily imagine Gene taking him just like this, spontaneous and dirty with no fussing over undressing or proper lube, just heat and hands and cocks and this unbearable friction driving Sam rapidly to the edge.

He grimaced, head tossing sideways into his pillow as orgasm drew near. He must be close, the way his bed was thumping now against the wall. ‘Yeah…’ he breathed, a hush through dry, wine-stained lips. ‘Fuck… _Gene_ …’

‘Sam?’

His eyes snapped open. His body shut down, frozen mid-stroke in an obscene tangle of limbs that was already making him feel ridiculous. With a sickening burst of horror, Sam realized it wasn’t his bed that had been thumping the wall behind his head.

‘Oy, Tyler, open the damn door already.’ Another series of knocks battered Sam’s fragile door, like the last nails in his coffin. He nearly fell off his cot in his haste to force himself back together, begrudgingly grateful that the shock of Gene’s appearance at his door had set his erection cowering away in terror.

‘Yeah, hold on…’ he called, shoving his shirttails back into his trousers and casting a panicked eye over his bed but it didn’t seem to offer up any obvious signs of debauchery. He spared a glance to his wristwatch as he turned the latch of his door, and groaned at the time he saw.

‘Awfully late, isn’t it?’ he snarled, glaring up into the wall that was Gene at the other side of his door, waiting indifferently like a man who hadn’t just been playing the lead in another man’s private porno reel.

‘You’re up, aren’t you?’

Sam delicately cleared his throat. ‘Not by choice.’ He wearily rubbed the back of his neck, frowning at the spill of light on his carpet until he could look Gene in the eye again. ‘Alright,’ he sighed. ‘What’s this about?’

‘That rash of home robberies. Might have a lead on our villain.’

‘Thought you’d put Ray and Chris on that one,’ Sam said, unable to keep the disagreeable edge from his voice. They had argued about Ray’s fitness to lead that investigation so soon after his demotion, and the awkward shift in Gene’s stance proved that he remembered the debate loud and clear.

‘Well…’ After a jaw-tightening pause, Gene shrugged and tilted his head with his usual feigned confidence. ‘One of my snouts might have some inside information of the sort he’s not likely to give up to anyone else. Not that Ray and Chris haven’t got it in hand otherwise,’ he added defiantly, leveling a hard glare at Sam’s wry smirk.

‘Oh, of course not.’ Crossing his arms across the chest of his creased shirt, Sam leaned against his doorjamb. ‘So what the hell has this got to do with waking me up at this hour?’

‘You weren’t asleep.’

‘Pretend I was.’

Gene rolled his eyes. ‘Buddy system, safety in numbers, and all that bollocks. Think that was your bright idea, Gladys, so while I’m so very sorry to have interrupted your beauty sleep…’

‘Alright, fine…’ Because Sam wasn’t stupid, he knew full well that once Gene had come to the door, there was no turning him away. With a last sigh largely for effect, he unhooked his coat from the door. ‘Go on, then.’

‘There’s a good lad.’ Gene treated him to a bracing slap on the shoulder before shoving him a touch too enthusiastically down the corridor; the flat of his hand seared through leather and polyester and skin like a brand to the back of his lungs. It burned the breath in his chest, set him awake and alight.

 _Much better._

They fell together into Gene’s car, silent as they drove from the underlit streets of Sam’s neighbourhood to the darker stretch of the docks. The quiet purr of the Cortina, the strange comfort of Gene’s solid presence in the driver’s seat relaxed Sam’s frazzled nerves back towards sleepiness; his eyelids flickered and fell, obscuring the details of their journey until the unnecessary screech of tires halting on the pavement snapped him awake again. With a low, disturbed grumble, Sam craned his head around, taking in a narrow vista of wide buildings and indiscernible night.

‘Where are we?’

‘Manchester,’ Gene answered shortly. He cranked the key in the ignition; the Cortina’s engine choked to silence.

‘Cute.’ Sam squinted through the windscreen at the line of anonymous warehouses looming ahead. ‘Care to be more specific?’

‘It’s the wonderful world of Oz,’ Gene snapped back impatiently, ‘and I’m off to see the Wizard.’ He opened the driver’s side door, and shot a reproving glare at Sam as he turned to do the same. ‘You stay here,’ he added shortly.

‘You what?’ But Sam dropped his hand from the door all the same. ‘Where are you going?’

‘In there.’ Gene jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate darkened steps leading down to a rust-edged basement door. ‘Here,’ he added, shrugging off the weight of his camelhair, ‘you can babysit my coat whilst you wait.’

Sam sputtered against the suffocating mess of smoky coat shoved into his face, heard the car door slam around him before he had successfully wrestled the heavy material down into his lap. By the time he had cleared the coat from his sight, Gene had already disappeared from view.

 _Bastard._ Sam huffed out a tired breath, ineffectually knocked the back of his skull off the padded leather headrest of his seat. A defiant itch at the back of his mind was determined to chase after Gene, to drive off with the Cortina to teach the clueless thug a much-needed lesson, to do _something_ more than just wait, but the late hour was conspiring with the familiarity of leather and smoke and _Gene_ surrounding him within the tight space of the car, drawing out a lazy sense of comfort and other, darker urges.

Unbidden, Sam’s nascent cock twitched back to awareness beneath the weight of Gene’s coat across his lap. Sam chomped down on his lower lip then, after a cautious glance out his side window, slipped a hand down beneath the camelhair to press his palm against the hard ridge of his cock through his trousers. Whatever hopes he had of calming his arousal vanished at that first tentative touch, and Sam groaned at his own weakness as he squeezed himself in earnest, his need fired up to the same harsh burn he had felt when Gene had interrupted him earlier.

Sam rubbed the heel of his hand harder along the length of his constrained cock, building friction to a heat that seeped through denim almost to the skin. He wondered how this evening might have gone different, if Gene had simply kicked in the door instead of knocking, if Gene had burst in and caught him with his hand on his dick and his Guv’s name on his lips. Gene, who had been shameless enough to linger when Sam had been naked and cuffed to his bed – his cock pulsed harder at the memory of Gene’s eyes roving over his body with so much interest and not the slightest hint of a blush.

Would Gene have remained so composed if Sam had given him something truly worth watching? Flexing his hips, Sam unfastened his trousers beneath the cover of Gene’s coat, casting a quick glance around the abandoned road even as he slid teasing fingertips down his hard length and pulled himself free of straining white cotton. The damp head of his cock brushed lightly against camelhair, and Sam shuddered at the edge of lust and dread, gripping tight with shaking fingers as he tried to rally some control over this horrible idea. He squeezed his eyes shut, knotted his free hand in Gene’s coat but the texture of the cloth beneath his fingers gave the illicit fantasy an added dimension of reality, a substitute for the weight and presence of the other man wrestling him down onto his bed while Sam stroked himself faster, tighter… _yes_ …

A distant, metallic scrape chilled Sam out of his pleasure like a bucket of ice water poured directly on his brain. ‘Shit, shit…’ he hissed, already forcing his engorged cock back into his trousers before his eye had spotted the source of the sound in the tall shape of his Guv stomping back up from the sunken basement door. Cursing Gene and himself in the same vile string of expletives, he winced and groaned as he worked his zipper back over his erection, struggling to get his breathing and his belt back in decent order.

If this was the start of some perverse pattern, Sam was already fed the fuck up with it.

His eyes widened as he followed Gene’s uneven swagger towards the car. He had removed his suit jacket and slung it back over his shoulder, its absence and the lift of his arm putting the long lines of his torso and legs on display. A shirttail thrust itself out from beneath his belt, flapping like a white flag at the hip of Gene’s rumpled trousers. Only as Gene drew up close to the driver’s side door was Sam able to drag his gaze upward to take in the spray of blood on his shirt and askew tie that seemed to originate from Gene’s battered face. An ugly gash clumped the long fringe of his hair to his forehead, and more blood dripped from his nose down to the beginnings of a swollen lip.

Sam shifted uncomfortably in his own seat as Gene dropped back behind the wheel, and made an unspoken point of keeping the coat huddled over his lap.

‘What the bloody hell happened to you?’

‘Nothing.’ Eyes averted, Gene sniffed hard through the sluggish drip of blood streaming from his nose. The tip of Gene’s tongue swept over his upper lip in a thoughtless effort to staunch the flow creeping towards his mouth, and Sam swallowed tightly.

As though sensing the intensity of Sam’s stare, Gene glanced sideways, then rolled his eyes. ‘Right,’ he sighed. ‘Went down to have a few civil words with my snout, got a bit of a kicking. Happy?’

‘You shouldn’t have gone in on your own,’ Sam chided, images of Gene in the full flush of combat clouding over his rational mind. Repressing an unwelcome swell of renewed lust, Sam pressed on with the matter more immediately to hand. ‘Why the hell did you get a kicking anyway? I thought this was one of your snouts. Old mates and all that shit.’

Gene huffed a laugh that turned into a wet, ugly cough. ‘Oh, yeah, bestest pals, Regan and I. Know him from my days in the boxing fraternity, only difference being that I pulled my socks up and applied my considerable talents elsewhere whilst that nasty piece of work kept himself happy as a pig in shite brawling it out on the underground gambling circuit. Daft bugger.’

Sam winced as Gene paused to wipe at his bloodied mouth with the back of his visibly unclean hand. ‘That’s disgusting.’

‘What, the odd flutter on some fighters?’ Gene snorted. ‘You jessie.’

‘No, your… damn it, just…’ Twisting awkwardly in his seat, Sam unearthed a handkerchief from one of his coat’s inner pockets – not that he had ever been in the habit of carrying one before, but he had inherited several with the coat and the flat and its drawers already packed with socks and pants and vests so he may as well put it to good use, which he promptly did by reaching across and daubing away the streaks of red from Gene’s face.

He realized his error too late, in a moment frozen by his thumb pressing Gene’s lower lip through the thin membrane of cotton and the wide stare it elicited from Gene’s bloodshot eyes. Sam flinched inwardly, and managed to snatch his hand away in the same moment that Gene finally broke his own stillness and took hold of the handkerchief himself.

‘Ta,’ he muttered shortly, ducking his head as he wiped clumsily at his face. Sam nodded once at his hands where they screwed themselves into Gene’s coat in his lap.

‘So.’ Forcing his hands to untangle themselves from the camelhair, Sam chewed awkwardly at his thumb, shuddered at the slight scent of blood warming his skin. ‘Did this Regan give you anything?’

‘You mean ‘sides a bloody nose and loose tooth?’ Gene leaned forward to check his reflection in the darkened windscreen. ‘Nope.’

‘What?’ Sam snapped his head around to stare at Gene, too indignant to care about their earlier awkwardness. ‘You mean you dragged me out of bed, drove us out here–’

‘You weren’t asleep.’

‘I was in bed!’ Sam yelled back. ‘Dragged me _out of bed_ , drove us out here, got a kicking from some old mate of yours and he didn’t even know anything?’

‘Oh, he knows something,’ Gene corrected dryly. ‘Probably has a few names and all. But I lost, didn’t I?’

‘Sure looks like it.’ Scowling fiercely, Sam glared past his own reflection into the night, then blinked into a frown. ‘And what do you mean, you _lost_?’

‘I mean I _lost_. There’s no need to rub it in, you prat.’ The glare Gene threw at him softened when he picked up on Sam’s honest confusion. ‘That’s how Regan works,’ he explained finally. ‘Don’t mind passing along the odd inside line here and there, but only if you’ll fight him for it.’

Sam crossed his arms across his chest. ‘Fight him for it,’ he repeated dubiously.

‘Yeah, well, Regan’s a bit of a nutter these days, really. Taken a few too many blows to the noggin, best as I can tell.’ After a pause to tilt his neck sideways, producing an alarming cracking sound, Gene glanced appraisingly back to Sam. ‘You two might have a couple things in common, come to think of it.’

Ignoring the thinly veiled insult, Sam stared out his window, across the cracked concrete to those darkened basement steps. Gene had neglected to shut the door completely, and a thin sliver of dull light throbbed in a narrow vertical line, crawling through the dark towards Sam’s sharpened gaze. His heart pounded beneath his breastbone. He swept an anxious tongue over his parched lips.

‘Yeah, we just might,’ he agreed softly. The car door opened beneath his hand, and Sam had one leg flung into the cool outside before Gene caught him by the back of his jacket.

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’

‘One nutter to another,’ Sam answered blithely, grinning as soon as the words left his mouth. ‘See if I can do any better.’

‘Oh, you _are_ joking.’ Gene let go of his coat and drew back as though needing to see his madness from a wider angle. ‘Sam…’

He cut Gene off before he could begin. ‘You think Regan knows something?’

‘I know he does.’

‘And he’ll spill so long as he’s been beat in a fight?’

‘Well, yeah, but…’ A frown pulled at Gene’s bloodied mouth. ‘You…’

‘What?’ Sam twisted back around in his seat, bristling with all the affronted anger simmering in his gut. ‘Reckon I can’t take him? Is that it? _Gladys_ here not good enough to throw a few punches at some old bruiser mate of yours?’

‘Never said that.’ The swift earnestness of Gene’s protest startled Sam out of his wounded pride. ‘Know you’re a right scrappy bugger,’ he added in a low mumble, ‘just…’

‘Just what?’ Even though every nerve in Sam’s body was now itching for a fight, desperate to transform frustrated lust into the release of easy violence, he hesitated at the shadowed uncertainty in Gene’s face, further confounded when his only reply was to duck his chin and shake his head once, stiffly, to the side.

‘Nothing,’ he muttered.

‘Fine. Good, then.’ Sam sprung from the car and slammed the door shut, hearing the echo of Gene’s driver door moments later. ‘What, you’re coming along?’

Gene glared at him over the Cortina’s roof. ‘Y’know where you’re going, do you?’

Sam opened his mouth, then snapped it shut with a scowl, refusing to give Gene any satisfaction as he followed him mutely down the damp back steps and through the rusted door.

As they navigated blind concrete corridors around anonymous corners, Sam grew begrudgingly grateful for Gene’s presence at his side, indicating each new turn with a steering hand at the nape of his neck that set a fresh rush of heat pounding in his veins at every steady squeeze of fingers. Something musk-tinged and thick waited in the underground air, the cumulative salt and blood of countless boxers prowling these corridors and the stale, inky whiff of pound notes that had once passed like party favours from one sweating palm to the next. From not so far off now, Sam heard the murmur of rough voices and a nasty bark of a laugh.

‘Nothing to fret over, Tyler,’ Gene said bracingly, mistaking the excited tension kicking up Sam’s shoulders for nervousness. ‘Just be the mouthy sod you always are and you’ll fit right in.’ His hand lingered over Sam’s leather-clad back. ‘And aim for his right shoulder if you can,’ he added, ‘hasn’t been the same since ’57.’

Sam answered with a tight nod and a subtle flex of his hands at his sides as Gene pushed them towards an open doorway into an impossibly cavernous hall buried at the heart of the warehouse. The depth of echoing voices was immediately explained by the mean bareness of the walls, the scuffed and stained concrete that cracked beneath Sam’s heels as they crossed the room towards a small clutch of men chatting at the edge of the room’s defining feature – the boxing ring, old and dirty but brightly lit against the barren dank of the space.

At their echoing footfalls, the conversation dwindled to a halt as each of the four men turned to appraise them with unmistakably aggressive glares and much shuffling of feet and shoulders. Sam wasn’t expecting much in the way of introductions and found he could do without when a particularly wide man with heavy knuckles and a crooked nose swaggered past his mates.

‘Back so soon, Gene?’ The man grinned lewdly as his narrow eyes flicked in Sam’s direction. ‘Brought me a little snack for afters, did you?’

‘Double or nothing, more like.’ Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Gene squaring his shoulders, tilting his jaw in a clear challenge spoken entirely by his body. ‘My DI here reckons you’ve got something to tell us about those break-ins that I might have missed during our earlier chat.’

‘You know I don’t give do-overs,’ Regan sneered, though his gaze raked over Sam with slower consideration. ‘Mmn.’

‘What’s wrong, Regan, lost your bottle all of a sudden?’

‘Guv,’ Sam hissed warningly, but Regan just laughed.

‘Hardly,’ he chuckled, still sizing Sam up with increased interest. ‘But not sure why I should bother, slip of a thing like this one…’

‘How about this,’ Gene piped up, shoving his hands in his pockets. ‘He fights for the same information I was asking for, and if he loses I’ll see what I can do about those extortion charges on your record.’

Regan pursed his lips, then nodded. ‘Yeah, why not.’

‘Guv!’ Sam turned on Gene, hands balling into premature fists. ‘You can’t go making criminal charges disappear like that, and you’re in no position to offer plea bargains for testimony.’

Gene shrugged. ‘Best not lose, then.’

‘Bastard.’ Sam whipped off his coat, thrust it into Gene’s chest. ‘Here. Your turn to play coat check girl.’

He scowled darkly as he followed Regan to the ring and used the ropes to hoist himself onto the low platform. He tested the grip of the rubber mat beneath his impractical Cuban heels whilst taking in the size and strength of his opponent. Regan lacked Gene’s imposing height but made up for it in broad planes of rangy muscle across his shoulders and chest. Every twitch and gesture spoke to a life spent fighting dirty, but the leer he directed at Sam in turn suggested dirty intentions of a different bent entirely, spoken in a language that shot straight to his groin and made his hands curl into fists.

‘You’re far too cute to be a copper,’ Regan taunted in an undertone pitched solely for Sam’s ear. ‘Sure your boyfriend down there won’t mind much when I bloody that pretty little mouth of yours?’

Sam didn’t reply, except to punch Regan as hard as he could across the jaw.

  


* * *

  
‘Far as nights out go, hasn’t been a bad one, eh?’

Sam sagged, buzzing and depleted, against the ropes of the boxing ring, watching Gene burn off the last of the adrenaline with a nearby punching bag. ‘Got the information we wanted, if that’s what you mean,’ he agreed lightly.

‘Sure,’ Gene grinned, a touch savagely, ‘right before we sent Regan and his boys scurrying away with their tails tucked between their legs.’

‘Still say you should’ve stayed out of it,’ Sam argued automatically, grimacing at the taste of blood still dancing on his tongue. ‘I had Regan just fine on my own.’

‘More than fine, judging by the way you had that poor bastard whimpering near the end.’ Gene shrugged, gave the punching bag a few more pointed blows. ‘But once Regan’s mates jumped in to drag you off… well, only seemed fair to even the odds, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ And Sam couldn’t help but grin brightly with the full-blooded satisfaction of victory, savouring the memory of Regan’s body pinned beneath his thighs, laying one fierce punch after the other into his muscled mass. ‘Yeah,’ he added, nonsensically. A burst of irrational laughter escaped from his bloodied mouth, which was probably a little alarming given the number of punches he had taken in return but his heart was racing and his knuckles throbbed and sang and he felt wildly, wonderfully _alive_.

At the ring of Sam’s sudden laughter, Gene stopped the heavy swing of the punching bag with a lazy, confident hug, letting his body absorb the momentum and pulling the pendulum short. His hooded eyes stared into Sam for a long, gasping moment; the tip of his tongue flicked briefly at his seeping upper lip and Sam’s smile faded with the urge to mimic the motion.

‘What?’ he asked cautiously.

Releasing the punching bag, Gene crossed the spattered concrete with unhurried strides, keeping a watchful eye on Sam above him as he approached the boxing ring. He lifted himself inside the ropes with a grace Sam would never have expected from the man, a feline knowing of his own physicality that made Sam swallow nervously as Gene straightened again to his full height and fixed him again with that quiet, thoughtful look.

‘You enjoyed that.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Sam lied.

‘Figures you won’t even admit it.’ Gene smirked in a way Sam had never seen him do before, too wise and lazy at once. ‘What if I fought you for it?’

‘For what?’

‘The truth.’ Gene shrugged. ‘Information. Same deal as before, loser’s gotta cough.’

Sam drew in a sharp breath, could taste a sweet copper tang still tickling through his mouth. ‘Don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘Oh, don’t go pretending you’re dim as Skelton all of a sudden, it’s not a good look on you.’ Gene slipped several steps closer into Sam’s personal space, eyes raking down then up; Sam knew full well what he was seeing, from the bloodied knuckles to the torn shirt to the bruise darkening on his cheekbone. ‘Goes like this, then, brainiac. We fight. Winner gets to ask the loser one question, anything he wants. Loser has to answer.’

‘That…’ Sam shook his head, throwing disdain in the way of his oncoming fear. ‘That’s got to be the most messed up version of Truth or Dare I’ve ever heard of.’

‘I don’t hear you saying no.’

With one more measured step, Gene crossed some threshold that Sam hadn’t realized existed between their usual tempting tension and outright threat. He couldn’t lie, couldn’t conceal himself with Gene this close. Every breath at this proximity was like pulling Gene’s scent and blood directly into his lungs, like a drug.

He shoved Gene away, as hard as he could.

From the narrowing of Gene’s eyes and the flex of his long fingers, Sam realized that his response had been the complete bloody opposite of _no_.

Sam barely had time to lift his arms before Gene was upon him, aiming a low blow into his gut that went clean under his block and knocked the wind from his chest. He doubled over, saw Gene’s knee rising to strike again, and madly launched himself forward before it could connect, catching Gene off balance with the full weight of his body slamming into his hips and sending them crashing to the mat.

This, Sam soon realized, was nothing like sparring with a boxer like Regan, nasty though the fight had been. They had exchanged some truly brutal punches, but that bout seemed almost polite compared to this harsh collision of bodies tangling together, snapping apart, Sam trying again and again to gain the leverage of his knees only to be dragged back down again.

Panting hard, he aimed a punch too wide of Gene’s jaw, yelled in frustration when a hand clamped down on his arm before he could pull it back again. Sam snarled and kicked, connected sharply with Gene’s knee but that only made the larger man drop heavier on top of him, his legs bracing Sam’s wide open against the mat. His captured right arm was brutally slammed down a second later, and Sam’s breath hitched at the look of savage triumph in Gene’s face. His cheeks had gone ruddy in their struggle, his green eyes flashing bright through surprisingly long eyelashes.

‘Looks like I win,’ he said, heavy between rasping breaths.

Sam sneered, lashed out with his free left arm but only managed something embarrassingly like a playful slap before Gene caught that hand as well and pinned it down to the other side of his head. Sam could only groan in protest as that final move left him splayed and helpless; the erection that had never truly faded since the Cortina was now back in full force. His sole consolation was that no part of Gene’s body was pressing directly on his hips, but damned if he couldn’t feel exactly how near a thing it was. Between the urge to arch upward and flinch away, Sam went as still as a dead butterfly pinned down in a lepidopterist’s cabinet.

‘That’s better.’ Reading his aborted struggles as conceded defeat, Gene seemed happy enough to push forward. ‘Gonna answer my question now?’

‘Yes.’ Sam glared up at him. ‘There. You asked a question, I answered. Are we done now?’

Gene scowled. ‘Like hell we are.’

‘Well, I say we are, so… _ahh…_ ’ Sam choked on his words as Gene responded to his renewed struggles with greater force, knees gouging at his inner thighs, hands tugging his arms wider apart until his shoulder joints ached. The downward pressure of Gene’s body brought them dangerously closer together, and this time Sam could feel the slightest contact glancing off his traitorous cock, the heat of Gene’s breath pushing down the collar of his ruined shirt.

‘What do you want, Sam?’ Gene growled the question so close to his ear that Sam shivered before he processed even part of its meaning.

‘I… what?’ He flinched at the broken rasp in his voice, shut his eyes, utterly ashamed.

‘You put in for transfer to my department, but you’ve done nothing but bitch and moan since you showed up.’ With his mouth still so close to Sam’s throat, Gene spoke as though imparting a secret. ‘The way you carry on, any sane bloke would’ve packed his bags and shipped his scrawny arse back to Hyde by now. Except you’re far from sane and still following me around every bloody day and letting me drag you off at all hours of night. So.’ Sam felt his hesitation in Gene’s held breath, the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. ‘What the hell is it you want?’

Sam dragged in a shaken breath that tasted like Gene’s sweat and aftershave.

 _I want you to let go of my hands,_ he thought, lightning-fast through his mind, _so I can grab your hair where it’s falling in my face, so I can pull it any which way I like._

 _I want to know what my blood would taste like if I licked it off your knuckles. I want to know what your blood would taste like if I licked it off your lips, right here and now._

 _I want to kill the air that’s keeping your body from crushing mine into this filthy boxing ring._

 _I want to feel you. I want to feel_ alive.

 _I want you._

‘I…’ He exhaled slowly, shaking now with the exhaustion of defeat. ‘I want to go home.’

He swore he felt Gene flinch as though beneath a fresh blow in the silence that followed. Sam kept his eyes shut, paralyzed, not knowing how he could ever escape this strange conversation unscathed. When Gene released Sam’s arms and rolled away, he supposed he should feel relieved; relief would have been a vast improvement on the hollow sickness in his gut.

‘Right.’ Gene sounded almost as empty as he felt, strangely distant for all that he still sat close to Sam’s prone body. ‘Right. I’ll, uh, drop you off on my way home, then.’

Gene was close enough to the ropes that he simply slid under and dropped to the floor before Sam had managed to regain his feet. His own confused limbs stumbled beneath him as he struggled to follow. ‘Um, thanks?’ he attempted feebly, hating the sentiment as soon as it left his mouth.

‘Don’t forget your coat,’ Gene added gruffly, waving a hand towards the cast-off lump of leather where Gene had dropped it on the floor earlier before joining the fight. He absently patted himself down, as though searching for a flask or cigarettes but Sam knew both would be in his suit jacket, which he had left back in the Cortina. Wearing nothing but trousers, shirt and tie, Gene looked strangely small, diminished.

‘Wait.’

‘I _am_ waiting, you twonk.’ Miraculously, he had produced a battered pack of Marlboros from his trouser pocket and now seemed to be hunting for a lighter.

‘No, I mean…’ Sam scrambled through the ropes, landed awkwardly at Gene’s side as he found then threw away a used-up book of matches. ‘Gene. What do you want?’

‘Those weren’t the rules, Sam.’ A disposable lighter appeared in Gene’s bloodied hand. In a renewed fit of anger, Sam knocked the lighter and the cigarette from his grasp and lunged without thinking, snaring Gene’s now-empty hand and yanking his arm up hard behind his back.

He had Gene pinned to the edge of the ring, had his own body plastered up against Gene’s back, in a matter of seconds. That Gene scarcely put up a fight was both worrying and infuriating.

‘Fuck your rules,’ he spat. ‘Answer the damn question.’

‘Y’know what I want?’ Gene’s voice dripped venom. ‘I want Man City to kick United’s pansy arses at their next match.’ He jerked his arm violently out of Sam’s grasp, effortlessly breaking his hold. ‘I also want a damn drink.’

Sam stared bleakly after Gene as he stalked off towards the door, then sighed.

‘Same here,’ he called out.

Gene slowed to a stop, glanced back as Sam bent at the waist to retrieve his coat.

‘S’late,’ he pointed out casually, eyes steady and unblinking. ‘Pubs’ll all be shut.’

‘Still got a bottle of scotch at mine.’ Sam shrugged into his coat, winced as his battered body ached into the motion. ‘Polished off the wine already, though. Sorry.’

‘Posh pillock.’ Gene waited until Sam had caught up before leading the way out into the endless maze of concrete corridors. ‘Guess you’ve just got that cheap shite in and all.’

‘Asbolutely,’ he replied easily, hands clenching in his pockets. ‘Nasty stuff. Could make a man go blind in ten minutes flat.’

Gene grunted, twitched the slightest smile. ‘Sounds bloody perfect.’

Sam smiled back, faint yet hopeful. ‘Perfect,’ he agreed.


End file.
